It took a long time to be available and is still at a beta state. Only a few months old now and 1.4 ought to be at the point where companies are starting to consider moving to it as a stable platform in the next 6 months.
As a coder you have to be able to at least use the cutting edge when you need to, and 1.4 has reached a point of having 1.4 only applications [like the IDE I use at work, IntelliJ's IDEA] which have been in beta for 6 months and are now out. I used to listen a lot to the Apple Java mailing list. It's terrible. Lots of developers who want to code on the platform but are getting the silent treatment from Apple in general. [I stopped listening 6 months ago, it might have improved now]. Apple don't give any information on what their Java plans are, or on timelines or possibilities for important missing libraries. It's all very well and good to try and surprise everyone with iChat or some such. You can't use the same marketing ploys on people you want to develop on your platform. On choice of platforms, I think OS X, XP and Linux are now all virtually equal. As a Java developer it doesn't really matter which I use, and they now have pretty much the same level of support. Linux is a better server testing platform, Windows has the better application support, but OS X is the most well-rounded of the platforms. The release of JDK 1.5 in a year or so will change this, as the Apple will fall behind for a year again. Feel free to knock my choice of platform :) I'm effectively being an agnostic in a world of religions. I'll use all options but believe fully in none. [I have the same views on Java. Objective C, QT and C# all tickle my fancy, but Java is what pays the bills at the moment]. Hen On Tue, 24 Dec 2002, Jerry Yeager wrote: > Okay I am a bit confused. Java 1.4.1 is available at Apple's Developer > site, so are you referring to 1.4 in general? But you mention that you > are coder? > > Just curious and not picking on your choice of platforms (smile). > > Jerry > > On Tuesday, December 24, 2002, at 01:36 AM, Henri Yandell wrote: > > > I'm a Java coder and [according to my wife] an OS junkie, so there are > > aspects of this that are truly geekish. Java on OS X has been > > impressive > > and unimpressive at the same time, companies are still writing Java > > applications for OS X as an afterthought, JDK 1.4 is still not out, and > > yet GUI's on OS X perform well and they've finally sorted out the JDK > > install to feel right. The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be January 28. For more information about the LCS, go to <http://www.kymac.org>.
